New Hard-Drive Tech Overcomes Magnetic Memory Problems

Seagate researchers now believe they can store as much as 50 terabits per square inch — equivalent to the entire printed contents of the Library of Congress — on a single disk drive for a notebook computer.Currently, the highest storage densities are around 50 gigabits per square inch.

The new techniques involves heating the memory medium with a laser-generated beam at the precise spot where data bits are being recorded, overcoming the “superparamagnetic limit” — a memory boundary based on data bits so small they become magnetically unstable.